4.23.2006

Supporting Actress Smackdown - 1958

Supporting Actress Sundays is project for the long haul. Each Sunday for a month of Sundays, StinkyLulu (re)screens all and offers an extended commentary on the nominees (plus some of those snubbed) from a given year's roster of Oscar hopefuls (the year is selected by StinkyLulu's lovely readers). Toward the end of that month, StinkyLulu joins with fellow movie obsessives to create a virtual roundtable -- or Supporting Actress Smackdown -- for the year in question.

The Year is 1958... But oh! -- Lovely reader, if you haven't already, you simply must jaunt over to Nathaniel's for the marvelous clipreel of 1958's Supporting Performances. Nathaniel constructed this glorious montage expressly for our edification and exhilaration. Pause to be in awe.(Quick aside about format: Because Lulu's all about Love, the Smackdowners comments are listed according to ascending love levels. Summary thoughts from the Smackdowners are at the end. Click the nominee's name/film for StinkyLulu's Supporting Actress Sunday review; the Stapleton review'll be published next Sunday.)

Nick Sez Y"A close facsimile of the kind of farcical stock figure that probably worked better on stage. She hunkers in, shrills her lines high and loud, cleans up semi-prettily, and basically disappears. Fine as these things go—but an Oscar nomination?"StinkyLulu SezYYY"Does it up and does it well. Sweet and silly, the full-out farce is strange to review in an Oscar field but Cass does what she does exceedingly well. Plus, that voice! Simply can't think of the movie without hearing it."Nathaniel SezYYY"Possibly too big a turn but you have to pitch to the rafters ifyou're trying to keep up with rat-a-tat-tat Roz' (not an easy task inany film). Bonus points: I share "Gooch"'s unquenchable thirst for Dr. Pepper."

Nick SezYY"I like it when voters gravitate toward unsensational performers, doing journeyman work with largely functional roles. Still, I don't think Hiller plumbs that deeply here, and I don't buy her with Lancaster at all. Intriguing, but too severe." Nathaniel SezYYYYY"Given the usual confines of the mature businesswoman role, I found herphysicality and rich voice a sensual surprise. Whether continually inmotion or silent and still with her back to the camera, you can always 'read' the emotions."StinkyLulu SezYYYYY"Perhaps it's the simplicity of surprise, but this performance caught Lulu totally off-guard & -- now, weeks later -- still has Lulu pondering its workings. Hiller offers an uncommonly textured performance of a role that, in different hands, would likely have been a simple serviceable performance of a serviceworker role."

Nathaniel SezY"Generally speaking the thaw of the ice queen is my favorite ofcharacter arcs. So when someone plays a frosty uptight woman who meltsfor love and manages to bore me to tears, they're doing something wrong. Wooden and unsatisfying."StinkyLulu SezYY"Hyer gets a little bit of Lulu's love for the chops she showed opposite Shirley in that not quite last scene. But otherwise? Big puddle of boring."Nick SezYYY"This film rarely affords its cast the heady, expressive leeway that we feel in the music and the images, so Hyer occasionally gets stuck as The Girl. But in scenes like her schoolroom confidential with MacLaine, she shows real muscle."

Nick SezYY"The most offbeat film in the bunch, but not the most interesting performance. Stapleton convinces us that she's turned on by Monty Clift, but surely there are bigger challenges? Not a rich enough part to warrant a nod."Nathaniel SezYYY"It's certainly forceful acting. But I had more questions about thecharacter than answers. Each scene was beautifully played but theperformance didn't seem cohesive causing me to imagine that they'd cut a key scene."StinkyLulu SezYYYY"Vulnerable, vicious, voracious... Stapleton's concentrated jolt of a performance is strange but thrilling, a surprising prototype for all Hollywood's Fatal Attractions yet to come. Too bad she had to do most of her work opposite that big-head-on-a-wood-stick, Montgomery Clift."

StinkyLulu SezY"It's an expert journeyman performance in a throwaway cliche of a role. But Lulu can't help but feel it's a performance that any remotely competent actress could have given."Nick SezYYYY"Stanley Kramer, all too typically, keeps forcing theses and emblems of American race relations down our throats, so Williams' subtly and slowly revealed racism offers terrific counterpoint. The only nominee with real mystery."Nathaniel SezYYYY"She may overplay the sexuality of her role as "the woman", but what'snote-worthy is the dead accurate portrayal of casual racism, full of shrugging 'I just don't know any better' rationalization and self-serving ignorance"

So, by a Y the Smackdown agrees with Oscar?!?!?!(Who'da thunk't.)And now some "Final Thoughts" from our inveterate SMACKDOWNERS:

StinkyLulu Sez: "Viewing these performances as a field, it's striking that these ladies are all teetering on some kind of sexual precipice. Peggy and Martha didn't even know they wanted it; Maureen and Cara have been waiting for it way too long; and Wendy's worried she'll never get it again. It's a curiously continuous horniness -- almost like Oscar had "erotic frustration" as an extra, secret, unannounced criterion in selecting nominees. And perhaps that's the explanation for the absence of certain other 1958 Supporting Actress nominations that would have certainly complicated the field. (Most notably, for Lulu at least, Madeleine Sherwood as "SisterWoman" Mae Pollitt in Cat On A Hot Tin Roof.) Fascinating though to consider. Are there any other "theme" years in terms of acting nominations?"

Nick Sez: "When I remember The Defiant Ones, Williams is immediately part of the memory, which I can't say of her fellow nominees. You walk into her cabin expecting Dita Parlo in Grand Illusion, but by sexing up the atmosphere so fast and then souring it with her bigoted ignorance, she complicates our perceptions more than anything else in the movie. By contrast, Peggy Cass and Martha Hyer are outshone in their own films by Coral Browne and Leora Dana. To be fair, the Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor fields weren't any richer, and I am always glad to be exposed to some new faces, or to some interesting early work by future fixtures like Hiller and Stapleton. But on the whole? Meh. Chili-cooking, tarot-reading Marlene Dietrich in Touch of Evil: now that's some kind of an actress. Even Mercedes McCambridge in the same movie does more with one butch haircut and four short words ("I want to watch!") than all these five gals combined."

Nathaniel Sez: "Prior to these screenings I had only seen Auntie Mame. So apart fromPeggy Cass and Maureen Stapleton, I was unfamiliar with the actressesnominated. Having no idea who Wendy Hiller was, I assumed that thenominated and winning lady from Separate Tables was the hilariouslybitchy senior citizen (Gladys Cooper, herself a three time Supporting Actress nominee) who terrorizes the other tenants with her judgments.You know this woman: She's the kind that Maggie Smith can portray (andget nominated for) in her sleep. So I was pleasantly surprised to findthat the performance that was actually nominated and went on to winwas the one that I myself was most drawn to. That's a rare treat, when Oscar and I meet and find common ground."

So, lovely readers, do you "meet and find common ground" with the Smackdowners for 1958? If so, if no -- please do continue the Smackdown in comments. And if you would like to join the fun/insanity/obsessiveness of a future smack down, just email StinkyLulu... The next Smackdown should be May 28 for a Year of Nominees yet to be determined.

Well, IMDb implies that Martha Hyer and Cara Williams (aka Bernice Kamiat) are both still alive... so you've gotta think this is more action than they've seen in a while. Someone, plug in their ethernets!

And now back to my wintry outpost in Supporting Actress Siberia... Separate tables, indeed.

I'm here! I've enjoyed this hugely despite not having seen a single one of the nominated perfs. From Nat's showreel alone I can tell that Peggy Cass would not have been my bag, and Hiller seems weirdly dykey in her part -- is this the idea? To Nick's list of the handful of American masterpieces made that year I'd have to add Man of the West, in which Julie London is really quite creditable and would get on my list. Also, what's wrong with Barbara Bel Geddes in Vertigo? She's sweet and sure-footed, and perfect for that admittedly limited role.

By the way, Hiller's performance here is closer to her late work than early work. Everybody should check her out as the definitive Eliza Doolittle in "Pygmalion" (1938) and as an unusually complex female (when it comes to movies of the period) in Powell and Pressburger's "I Know Where I'm Going!" (1945). Lovely films both.

I'd say try for Thelma Ritter in something. I think this is more exciting than the Best Actress List. And I love the consecutive noms. What about doing an early, early year? Like the first year of Oscar--could you even get all the pics?